Theodore Roethke Quotes

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

Theodore Roethke

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• Firsts

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Quotes to Explore

• I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

  

  Karl Lagerfeld
  • People
  • School
  • War

• You think you're looking at things all the time, but you're not looking at things, you're looking at what your brain is interpreting through light and color. And who knows what everybody else sees?

  

  Fiona Apple
  • Time
  • Light
  • Brain

• Native trees are so important to our ecosystem.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • Important
  • Trees
  • Ecosystem

• The thing about Moby Dick is that, at heart, it's a very simple plot - there's only one white whale in the ocean. When you're a boy growing up in a hostile home, you imagine it's unique: it's happening only to you.

  

  Gavin O'Connor
  • Up
  • Heart
  • Home

• For a woman to say she has had a dalliance with another woman is quite trendy these days. I do not like trendiness. Life isn't about dalliances - it's about individuals. You come across people in your life that you find very interesting. It's not about something flighty.

  

  Saffron Burrows
  • People
  • Life
  • She

• I've never hidden my faith, but there are only a couple of issues I would die for. There are a few others I would dig my heels in on, and I've told my caucus that what they see is what they get.

  

  Dan Webster
  • Faith
  • Die
  • Never

• My father was a Republican and he hated Roosevelt. And that's sort of been the battle of my life, I think. You have to understand I grew up a Republican conservative. I hated Castro. And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture and we would never fit in there.

  

  Oliver Stone
  • Life
  • Up
  • Money

• All men were alien one to another, at times, not only aliens.

  

  Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Men
  • Alien

• What the world needs now is love, sweet love, It's the only thing that there's just too little of. What the world needs now is love, sweet love, No not just for some but for everyone.

  

  Hal David
  • World
  • Sweet

• Layton: After all these years of inaction, will the Prime Minister finally get something done and do something the former government would not do and that is to cancel the subsidies to big oil and big ass-I mean big gas and start putting-Stephen Harper: Mr. Speaker, I promise to get to the bottom of it.

  

  Jack Layton
  • Done
  • Promise

• I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

  

  Irving Kristol
  • Important
  • Action

• For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness of deserting his post.

  

  Marcus Aurelius
  • Men
  • Thinking
  • Truth

• ’Twas on a sunny summer dayI trod a mighty city’s street,And when I started on my wayMy heart was full of fancies sweet;But soon, as nothing could be seen,But countenances sharp and keen,Nought heard or seen around but toldOf something bought or something sold,And none that seemed to think or careThat any save himself was there.

  

  Arthur Hugh Clough
  • Heart
  • City
  • Sweet

• In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.

  

  Jane Goodall
  • Great
  • Kindness

• To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

  

  Marcel Marceau
  • Thoughts
  • Silence

• I do have an occasional temper - I sort of inherited my dad's short fuse.

  

  Princess Eugenie of York
  • Dad

• New Zealand has incredible global recognition for grass-fed livestock.

  

  Joel Salatin

• I saw the Sex Pistols, and they were terrible.

  

  Bernard Sumner Bad Lieutenant
  • Sex

• Do not grieve for her! Who knows, but she may have found the joy she sought? Love and patience are all that make for happiness in this world; or in the world of the past or of the future; of the living or the dead. She dreamed her dream; and that is all that any of us can ask.

  

  Bram Stoker
  • World
  • Love
  • Future

• When I first started, I worked with three chords in every bar, but I found that tied me down - I'm not a chord-change writer, I'm a songwriter.

  

  Neil Diamond
  • Firsts
  • Found
  • Three

• Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed, No austere faith based on ignoble fear Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace. Unless the humblest creatures on the earth Are bettered by thy loving sympathy Think not to find a Paradise beyond.

  

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox
  • Earth
  • Fear
  • Faith

• About the joys and the courage, I really don't know what other people think. I just know that I've never left Africa. I've lived there all my life. And one of the wonderful things, in spite of all the terrible things that happen in South Africa, is the way people continue to keep their dignity.

  

  Nadine Gordimer
  • People
  • Life
  • Thinking

• Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.

  

  Sébastien-Roch Nicolas
  • Firsts
  • Eating
  • Quotations

• Being, not doing, is my first joy.

  

  Theodore Roethke
  • Joy
  • Firsts